Playkey raises over $10.5 million in ICO

Playkey, Russia’s first cloud-based decentralized gaming platform and a resident startup of the Skolkovo Foundation, has raised more than $10.5 million in an ICO (Initial Coin Offering).

The team behind Playkey, a cloud platform that allows users to play the latest games, even on outdated devices. Photo: Playkey.

During the campaign, 100 million tokens of Playkey’s proprietary cryptocurrency (PKT) were released, 60 percent of which were for sale. The amount earned was comprised primarily of private investments. Three investment funds — Uncharted Capital, Allrise, and G2H2 Capital — also bought over one million dollars’ worth of tokens apiece.

Egor Gurjev, CEO of Playkey, a resident of Skolkovo's IT cluster. Photo: Playkey.

“The money we earned will go toward developing Playkey’s P2P model and expanding into the American and Asian markets,” said Playkey CEOEgor Gurjev.

Playkey’s technology is already used by 2.5 million players per month to run modern games on low-spec and outdated PCs and laptops via its cloud-based platform. The company currently uses servers located in Moscow, London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, but plans to use the ICO funds to launch a peer-to-peer platform in late 2018 in which users’ computers all over the world will be added to Playkey’s own servers as rented mini-servers, meaning owners of powerful PCs can rent out their power to users who need it. The currency used within the Playkey ecosystem will be PKT, of which just under 12 million were sold in the ICO.

“In the long run, the value of Playkey tokens will be determined by market forces. Needless to say, the Playkey Foundation will make its own corrections as the managing entity,” said Playkey CTO Alexey Lykov.

“Within the framework of our business model we assume that demand for PKT will increase over time. At first the tokens will be used to pay for playtime on the service, but eventually they will also be used to make in-game purchases, etc. We’re going to motivate players to use PKT more often, and we are optimistic about the growth of the cryptocurrency’s value in the long term,” he added.

A total of 2,543 people bought tokens in the ICO, which closed on November 30. Playkey announced Tuesday that its tokens had appeared on the EtherDelta exchange.

Gurjevsaid that raising over ten million dollars in the space of a couple of months was a challenge, “but it was also proof of the quality of our product and our company’s performance,” he said.

“During this time we participated in top blockchain conferences all over the world, from CoinAgenda Global in Las Vegas to the World Blockchain Forum in London, won Startup Sauna in Singapore, formalized a partnership with the South Korean Coinlink market, and obtained support from professionals from industries ranging from blockchain to VR,” said Gurjev.

The Playkey project has taken in $2.8 million in investments from a large European venture-capital fund, and earlier this year, it raised $1.5 million in investment from Darz, a major German IT service provider and data centre owner, in exchange for an undisclosed share of the company.